SCIENCE AND RELIGION 203 



TVe think, however, that if there is a decadence 

 of delight and reverence in the presence of Nature, 

 it must be due rather to the conditions of modern 

 urban civilization than to the spread of Science. 

 Many men, some by choice, and some under 

 coercion, have got quite out of touch with Nature, 

 to their own great loss. For Man was cradled 

 and brought up in Nature, and if, because of 

 civilization, he cannot any longer continue to live 

 in the old home, it is a condition of emotional 

 sanity that he should periodically return there, 

 as the migratory birds do. % It is this old-estab- 

 lished association, we think, that gives deep 

 import to that "uprush of feeling from below 

 the ordinary level of consciousness" which we 

 experience when we allow the beauty of Nature 

 to play upon us. In Emerson's transcendental 

 language, "Nature is the organ through which 

 the universal spirit speaks to the individual." 



FROM THE RIDDLES OF THE UNIVERSE TO RE- 

 LIGION. Having referred to Man's practical and 

 emotional relations with Nature and with his 

 fellows, we come to the third relation, which is 

 intellectual or scientific. The first voice of Na- 

 ture is Endeavour, the second is Enjoy, the third 

 is Enquire. For hundreds of thousands of years, 

 Nature has been setting Man problems, leading 

 him gradually from the practical to the more 

 abstract. On the one side there is Man inquisi- 



